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David Bushnell And His American Turtle
by
“It’s nothing. I’m not used to pulling so long at the oar,” said the son.
When they came to the bank, the full moon shone athwart the little boat rocking on the stream.
“What’s that?” exclaimed both parents.
“That is the Lady Fenwick. I’ve been building the boat myself. You advised me, father, to go to ship-building one morning–do you remember? I took your advice, and began at the bottom of the ladder.”
” You built that boat with your own hands, you say?”
“With my own hands, sir.”
“In two weeks’ time?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And rowed it all the way down the river, and up the Pochaug?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good boy! You may go in and have your supper,” said Mr. Bushnell, patting him on the back, just as he had done when he returned from college with his first award.
As for Madam Bushnell, she smiled down upon Lady Fenwick and did her great reverence in her heart, while she said to the boat-builder:
“David, dear, wait a few minutes, and I’ll give you something nice and warm for your supper. Your father, Ezra and I had ours long ago.”
That night Mr. Bushnell did not lie awake to listen for the stealthy stepping in the upper room. He slept all the sounder, because he had at last seen one stroke of honest work, as he called it, as the result of his endeavors to help David on in life.
As for David himself, he went to sleep, saying in his heart: “It is a good stepping-stone at least;” which conclusion grew into form in sleep, and shaped itself into a mighty monster, that bored itself under mountains, and, after taking a nap, roused and shook itself so mightily that the mountain flew into fragments high in air.
If you go, to-day, into the Connecticut River from Long Island Sound, you will see on its left bank the old town of Saybrook, on its right the slightly younger town of Lyme, and you will have passed by, without having been very much interested in it, an island lying just within the shelter of either bank.
In the summer of 1774 a band of fishermen put up a reel upon the island, on which to wind their seine. Over the reel they built a roof to protect it from the rains. With the exception of the reel, there was no building upon the island. A large portion of the land was submerged at the highest tides, and in the spring freshets, and was covered with a generous growth of salt grass, in which a small army might readily find concealment.
The little fishing band was now sadly broken and lessened by one of the Washingtonian demands upon Brother Jonathan. For reasons that he did not choose to give, David Bushnell joined this band of fishermen in the summer of 1775. Gradually he made himself, by purchase, the owner of the larger part of the reel and seine. In a few weeks’ time he had induced his brother Ezra to become as much of a fisherman as he himself was.
As the days went by, the brothers fairly haunted this island. They gave it a name for their own use, and, early in the day-dawn of many a morning, they pulled the Lady Fenwick wearily up the Pochaug, to snatch a few winks of sleep at home, before the sun should fairly rise and call them to their daily tasks, for David assumed to help Ezra on the farm, even as Ezra helped him on the island.
The two brothers owned the reel and the seine before the end of the month of August in 1775. As soon as they became the sole owners, they procured lumber and enclosed the reel, and very seldom took down the seine from its great round perch; they used it just often enough to allay any suspicion as to their real object in becoming owners of the fishing implements.
About that time a story grew into general belief that the tomb of Lady Fenwick was haunted. Boatmen, passing in the stillness of the solemn night hours, asserted that they heard strange noises issuing from the hill, just where the lady slept in her lonely burial-place. The sounds seemed to emerge from the earth, and timid men passed up the river with every inch of sail set to catch the breeze, lest the solemn thud should sound, that a hundred persons were willing to testify had been heard by each and every one of them, at some hour of the night, coming from the tomb.